T-Squared: Our Fall Membership Drive!

Today we begin our four-day fall membership drive — a companion to our maiden effort in early May, when we obliterated expectations and brought in more than $44,000 in multi-year gifts from more than 400 members. We're asking folks to pledge at a time when we have much to celebrate, substantively and otherwise, including the second anniversary of our launch (more about that on the actual day, this Thursday).

You know the drill, and you know the pitch:

All of us at the Trib are working hard to inform, through the content we produce on our site and publish in The New York Times and newspapers across the state, hundreds of thousands of Texans each month about the challenges we face in health care, immigration, public education, higher education, criminal justice, energy, etc.

We're putting an unprecedented amount of data in front of an untold number of folks, giving them the tools to be more thoughtful, productive and engaged citizens — to make better choices at election time and all times.

And we're bringing a passion for big public policy debates all over this state through events — on college campuses, in community centers and everywhere in between — at which public officials, policy wonks and newsmakers answer for the work they're doing (or not doing) on our behalf and how they're spending (or not spending) our tax dollars. In doing so, we're convening a important public conversation about our values, as Texans and Americans.

A tax-deductible contribution to the Trib makes all of that possible. We are, as we've noted many times, a nonprofit news organization, meaning we rely on the generosity of individuals, foundations and corporations to fund our great reporting and our innovative use of technology, with the ultimate goal of putting public service journalism in front of as many people as possible.

That is the route to a better, brighter Texas. The low level of civic engagement in this great state of ours — not just an abysmally inadequate voter turnout, but a general lack of knowledge about what's going on at the Capitol and why it matters — is the true incumbency protection program. It's the true impediment to progress, whatever your political persuasion. It holds us back. It keeps us from achieving everything we want and need. It coarsens and cheapens our discourse. Fortunately, it's in our power to make things right.

The Trib aspires to be a positive force for change. It can be with your help. Won't you become a member today?

THANK YOU!